OLE (activex) is a great technology whereby a WhizFolders topic can show the contents of another type of document and can let you edit it from within WhizFolders. For example, you can put an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document in a topic. In order for this to work, the host application for that type of document must have an OLE server on the system. When you go to insert OLE objects, you would see a list of all kinds of objects you can insert.
Before I continue, some important points: You can either have objects that completely reside in your WhizFolder document or you can just have a link to an external file holding the object. Unless you know that the object is small, I would recommend you to always use a “linked” object. Otherwise, you might slow down WhizFolders considerably. I will explain how you create a linked object in the following discussion.
We will follow an example step by step.
- Suppose, you have an excel spreadsheet called “my account.xls” that you want to insert as an OLE object in a topic called “My account.”
- First decide whether you want to insert a complete copy of the spreadsheet or just a “linked” object. I always advise a “linked” object unless the object is very small. The advantage is that your xls file stays outside for you to manage or edit separately. At the same time, WhizFolders can always display the latest contents of this file.
- There are two ways, you can insert. Just drag and drop this file from Explorer to the Topic editor with Ctrl key pressed. Then the same dialog will appear that appears when you click on the menu “Insert Object” on the editor. So for existing files, it is quicker to use the drag and drop with Ctrl key method and for new objects, it is better to use Insert Object.
- On the dialog, select the file you want to insert (unless already filled in the drag and drop method) and select “Create from File.” Check the Link to create a linked object and click OK.
- That’s it. You will see that the topic now shows the spreadsheet! To edit the spreadsheet at any time, you just need to double-click on it or select “Microsoft excel spreadsheet Object–Edit” on the right-click menu. This menu changes description based on the object. Very neat!
- There is yet another magic up WhizFolders sleeve. If you are using a non-linked object, you can take advantage of in place editing. You can put ON an editor option “Use in place editing of OLE objects” in General Options. If you do that, for editing, the topic editor itself assumes the role of Excel application and starts looking like it with proper toolbars etc. But this feature is not available for Linked objects.
So understand OLE for once and start using it to your advantage. Only remember that you should not put large OLE objects as embedded objects and you will be ok.